LG WCD-800 wireless charger announced at MWC, we go hands-on

Over in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, LG has announced the LG WCD-800 wireless charging cradle.

The device - which works along the same lines as Palm's Touchstone technology by eliminating the need to plug a wire in to your smartphone to juice it up - has gone on show at the Spanish expo alongside the existing WCP-700 model.

The cradle can charge a compatible LG smartphone in portrait or landscape mode and will work with all of the handsets that the Korean company announced at MWC we're told, as well as all devices compliant with the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard.

"As smartphones become the de facto medium for consuming multimedia content and communicating, it is not unusual to find oneself having to recharge a phone a couple times a day,” said Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

"It only made sense to turn that charging time into a positive user experience by making the smartphone useful while sitting in the cradle.”

The deck of the WCD-800 measures 75.8mm wide and the charging area is double the size of LG’s WCP-700. It works by using electric currents produced by the magnetic fields of electric coils packed in under the charger.

The WCD-800 will be introduced first in Korea followed by North America in the first half of the year, no word on a UK release as of yet.